According to the Economic Policy Institute, the typical CEO of the 1960s made 20 times what one of his average employees did. In 2022, according to an AFL-CIO report, the ratio climbed to 324-1. That’s not inflation — that’s “greed-flation.”
LA Times
July 21, 2023
Regulators have so far been unwilling to fight powerful tech giants over worker classification, said Celine McNicholas, counsel at the Economic Policy Institute. She said gig companies should already be treating their drivers as employees, but have “decided they are unwilling to comply with the law.”
“That is the business model that they have employed out of the gate, and they have gotten away with it,” she added. “There hasn’t been federal enforcement. Where is the DOL lawsuit against these companies? That is how change is made in big companies that are skirting regulations or violating the law.”
Bloomberg Law
July 21, 2023
By breaking down the price increases into their three main components — labor cost, nonlabor inputs and profit markup — the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) provides much better evidence for how inflation came about during the pandemic. The EPI study looks at these three components from 2007 to 2019 and from the second quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021 across Non-Financial Sector industries (NFC), which form 75% of the entire private sector. The study shows that from the second quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021, overall prices in the NFC sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%. It shows an acceleration of over 1.8% price growth compared with the 2007-2019 pre-pandemic business cycle.
Ventura County Star
July 21, 2023
In 2021, the top 10% of Americans held nearly 70% of US wealth, up from about 61% at the end of 1989, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The top 1% of earners in the United States now takes home 21% of all the income in the United States, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
That means a top-ranked university can charge whatever it wants and will still find wealthy families willing and able to pay each year.
CNN Business
July 21, 2023
Like many older Americans, they keep working because they can’t afford to quit. An April report by the Economic Policy Institute summed it up like this:
“No Way Out: Older workers are increasingly trapped in crummy jobs and unable to retire.”
Labor economist and New School professor Teresa Ghilarducci, co-author of that report, told me that as housing and other living costs have risen in the post-pension era, it’s tougher for workers, let alone retirees, to pay their bills. And that financial fragility is far more prevalent among Black and Latino people.
LA Times
July 21, 2023
CEOs earned 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021, the Economic Policy Institute reported in October.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
July 21, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute published data that suggests these aberrations to employees’ scheduled times aren’t just inconvenient for workers, but that they may just lead to higher levels of burnout, stress, and at-home strife.
“Employees who work irregular shift times, in contrast with those with more standard, regular shift times, experience greater work-family conflict, and sometimes experience greater work stress,” the article states.
The Daily Dot
July 21, 2023
Public educators have long complained about stagnant wages. Adjusted for inflation, teachers’ average weekly pay has increased by only $29 between 1996 and 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The wage problem has contributed to a public-school teacher shortage in some parts of the country.
The Wall Street Journal
July 21, 2023
The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws has increased by 37% within the last year, according to a March report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. The report identified 10 states that have introduced or passed bills within the last two years that would weaken child labor standards.
Huffpost
July 21, 2023